emove barriers to peace and nonviolent conflict resolution are also sought.
The problem is that the threat of war continues and while the United States has managed to downsize but maintain its defense industry, there is a lack of understanding regarding barriers to peace and how to remove them and it remains unclear how to solve conflict with nonviolent methods. Since attitudes toward war may contribute toward its existence as well as barriers to peace and the acceptance of nonviolent solutions, a study is needed to investigate these attitudes. Studies of war acceptance attitudes are lacking. Shepherd and Shepherd (1996) studied war attitudes with a 1991 United States national survey that was conducted during the Persian Gulf War. The authors analyzed factors such as academic discipline on effects on war attitudes. Findings showed that academic training and opposition to the Vietnam War were statistically linked to political leftism, antimilitarism, and willingness to consider active protest. While this study pointed out that specific factors may be linked to war attitudes, it provided only limited information regarding specific attitudes that may be linked to war acceptance attitudes.
Finch (2000) reported on the psychology of propaganda. War ideas are facilitated through propaganda and in this manner social support for war acceptance is enhanced. According to Finch, propaganda manages the opinions and attitudes of people by manipulating social suggestion. In fact the principles of social psychology have been deliberately used to promote attitudes toward war. For example, following the First World War, Germany, the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom were part of an intellectual debate that sought to influence public opinion about war. In the 1930s, Germany was involved in mass-psychology testing to measure behavioral and emotional responses to overt propaganda messages. Raw material was provided ...